


Where I Belong

by thedarkestdaisy



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, Freeform, long distance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-03-23 13:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3769936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedarkestdaisy/pseuds/thedarkestdaisy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bass leaves Charlie.</p><p>He doesn't have any reason to come back for her now. This is how empty feels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I leave you behind because it's better this way.

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd.

_I am alone. Waiting for nothing. If my heart freezes, I won't feel the breaking._  
-Vashti Bunyan

 

Three years, eight months, blah blah blah after the war and she still can't figure out what she wants to do with her life. What she wants out of life.

The jobs Blanchard had her running with her uncle have slowly stopped coming in, especially after she and her uncle and Bass have revived something called the Pony Express last year. God she thought she rode fast, those guys can get across the country in a matter of days. 

So now she sits in Miles office pouring over documents he deems unworthy of his time but is still probably important enough that someone should be taking a look at them. For a while she was helping out grandpa in the clinic but Charlie has come to a point in her life where she is sick of taking care of people. She's not exactly a people person. Charlie likes her space and she likes the quiet, because the quiet means no more trouble or drama or problems- which is exactly why she moved out of her mom's house. 

Her place is small, like really small. The only things she took with her was a bed and a dresser her grandpa gave her. The neighbors up the gravel road are nice and helpful but extremely chatty. After a short introduction to the man, his wife, and their two daughters she makes herself at home. A little shed off to the side of the minuscule house became a home for her horse. Some nights when she leaves her window open to let in the breeze she can hear it kicking around and snorting. It makes her think of late night missions with Miles, Bass and Connor- before Conner found a pretty girl and knocked her up and then moved away down south. And of course, Bass followed him.

So now as she sits in Miles office reading blurry lines about leftover rebel factions that are really just gypsy towns she thinks about the day he left. 

Connor's girl was nice and all but Charlie couldn't help but hate her as she was the one who talked Connor into moving closer to her parents. Charlie gave her a civil smile as she climbed into the back of the wagon loaded with the three of their belongings. Connor surprised her and held her tightly against him. 

“Promise me that you'll try and take care of yourself.” He whispered into her ear. There was a brotherly tone of affection in his voice, something that she realized she would be missing out on the second that wagon would begin it's journey south. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight enough to memorize his smell and his goofy smile that would slip out every so often.

“I'll try.” She had said, pulling back to give him her best version of a smile. Something that didn't reflect how sad she was on the inside.

“Once we get settled in you could always come and visit.” He winked at her and then climbed into the front seat before setting his pack down at his feet. Connor turned and talked to his girl as she leaned over the front of the wagon. 

As Charlie watched them she could feel him approach her. The last she saw of him was as he was walking around the back of the house with Miles. After over three years of fighting with each other she had come to develop a sense of him. Like her body can feel him whenever he came within a certain distance of her and she has no choice but to turn and seek him out. She felt a heaviness in her arms and a breaking in her chest as he walked towards her and the wagon.

She keeps her eyes on the ground and watches as he comes closer, hears him heave his pack over the back of the wagon and then turns to stand in front of her. His boots are scuffed more on the right foot and the shoestrings on the left boot are frayed. Charlie knew if she looked up it would be the last time she sees him so she puts it off just a moment longer. Her boots looked so much smaller compared to his, she feels so much smaller. 

“Charlotte, look at me.” He commands, his voice soft and quiet though. It isn't until she looks up into his blurry face that she notices the fat tears openly falling down her cheeks. She made an attempt to swipe at them with the back of her hand before he noticed but the softening of his features told her that he caught the sight of them. 

“You're leaving me.” She twisted her mouth in a straight line before something loud and sorrowful could make its way out of her throat. He shifts and looks down at her with some unnameable emotion she's never seen cross his face. Her face is smashed into his chest within seconds. Her arms wrapped around his hard frame and she holds him there, trying to commit every single feeling of him to memory. The soft outer shirt he wore smelled like the woods and the lines of raised skin just below it on his back painting a picture of his pain in her mind. The beat of his heart in the shell of her ear becomes a song that will stick in her head and the rise and fall of his chest washing over her like a calm storm. 

Charlie didn't care that this hug exceeds all time limits of friendly. Didn't care that she could hear her mother make judgmental throaty sounds behind them. The only thing she cared about is the way he molds her to him. His hand, buried in her hair at the back of her head, keeping her firmly placed against him. His other hand rubbing small circles against the jutted blades of her shoulders. He leans down to place a kiss at the corner of her head and he held his lips there for just a touch too long. She could feel the thick hair of his beard and mustache scrape along her forehead and a gush of warmth as he exhaled from his nostrils. And then he pulls away and her arms fall to her sides.

He doesn't have any reason to come back for her now. This is how empty feels.

“I'm sorry.” His eyes bore down into hers and she could feel him searching for something before he quickly gives up and walks to the front of the wagon. Tears burned her eyes as she watched him scale up the side of the wagon into the front seat beside his son. He didn't turn around to wave but Conner whispered something into his ear before turning around to frown at her as Bass set the wagon in motion.

He didn't even say good-bye.

Charlie shifts in the office chair, not one to let memories of him infiltrate her thoughts, no matter how hard she has to fight them off. It's almost been a year now and the only reason she knows he's still alive is because of the short correspondence he keeps with Miles and Blanchard. Sometimes Miles leaves his letters on his desk and Charlie can't help but hold them close and trace his words with her fingernail. When he inquires what kind of trouble she's been getting into or whose hearts she's breaking she can almost hear him beside her with his snark and charm. She misses him more than she thought she had the capacity to.

There is a bang of a door slamming outside Miles' office and then soon he walks in and smiles down at her.

“Anything important in that letter or are you just keeping it for the sentimental value?” He gestures down to one of Bass' letters folded up between her fingers. She had no idea she was even holding on to it as she read through the reports of the rebel factions moving in closer from the Plains. Charlie shakes her head and stuffs it into her jean pocket and holds up the document she'd been reading through.

“You should probably take a look at this. Got some factions getting pushed into our territory by war-clans. Not a problem, yet.” She says quietly and pushes the document to the other side of the desk for him to look at. He doesn't pick it up, just stares at her.

“Kiddo, you gotta get out of this building and do something.” His voice is gravel deep and serious. 

“I will be. I'm going home in a few minutes and then I'll be back here tomorrow to go over more papers you think are unworthy of your time.” 

“No. I mean, what do you want?” He moves closer to the desk to stare down at her. “Do you want to join the Rangers? Because at the rate you're going I'll gladly get you a spot. Or maybe find some guy and settle down? Fuck, if you want to go and be a cobbler or start farming I'll figure out some way to help you but you have to do something. You're just kind of letting yourself be tossed around in the waves.”

Charlie sighs and looks away. She knows these things. Thinks about them all the time. The world that they've made for themselves after the war doesn't seem to have a place for her; she can't find a spot to fit in anywhere. 

“I don't think what I want matters anymore, to be honest. The chance has already slipped away.” She admits. Miles looks down at his boots, unsure of what to say to her admission.

“He...asks about you.” Miles frowns at the laminate flooring. “I mean that's what this is about, right?” When he looks back up to her his voice is soft with understanding. He knows what it looks like when a heart aches. He knows because he's seen her drown herself in every bar in town and growl at any man that gets too close. Watched her sit in a chair for hours with only her thoughts to keep her company. Watched her stare at his chair at the table, knowing he would no longer be there to fill it.

Charlie nods slowly, unaware that he could see through her so easily. “Like I said, it doesn't matter.” She sighs and grabs her bag from a coat rack next to the door, can feel his eyes on her as she moves about the office to collect her things before she darts away. “He's too happy to come back. Just read his letters- he's got everything he's ever wanted.”

Miles watches with a heavy heart as she swallows back her sadness and shoves it way deep down until it can no longer see the light of day. She slips out the door and he doesn't think twice about reaching for his ink well and a clean sheet of paper. The sound of her boots as she walks away spurs him to begin his letter.

_Greetings Asshole,_  
_There is something you should probably know about._


	2. So many miles and so long since I left you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A letter from Miles to Bass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Un-beta'd because this would probably depress my beta. Also because I don't have one.

I won’t say please love me every single day  
I won’t try to stop your freedom in any way  
You’ve got your life and I’ve got mine  
I’ve got no right to call you mine  
Oh darling I am not the same without you  
You just light the fuse and I will blow  
All you have to do my love  
Is go  
-Vashti Bunyan

 

_Greetings Asshole,  
There is something you should probably know about._

 

_I don't know if I ever told you how happy I am for you. Well, I honestly am. You finally have a family again, and that's really great. I know how important it is to you. You got everything you ever wanted. A successful son who protects his town and the people he loves, and a little grand-daughter to make you feel super old. Emmaline sounds like a peach and in a few years we'll retire and you can help guide her through all the things you missed out on the first time. I know it won't be the same and I'm sorry about that. But just think, if I hadn't had taken Connor to Mexico than he probably wouldn't have turned out to be so awesome. You're welcome._

_But I'm really writing this stupid letter to tell you that somewhere along the line you fucked up again. I would be perfectly happy to just sit back and let the chips fall where they may but I think you deserve to know this time. I can't stand by to watch it any longer. Something has changed in Charlie since you left and it's not a change for the better. It actually hurts like hell to see her like this. When she's not moping around town and in bars she's holed herself up in my office or in her little house. She doesn't smile as much as she use to, hardly at all now, and until recently I've forgotten that I use to live for those smiles._

_God, it reminds me so much of you after the car accident that I feel like I'm reliving your grief. Only where yours was loud and reckless hers is quiet and heartsick. I wouldn't be telling you any of this if I thought it would pass given some time but it's almost been a year and things have remained the same. Watching her is like watching a ghost walk around in front of my eyes. She's part of the world but she's not living in it. Everyone around her is going on with their lives; settling down, having kids, enlisting, starting businesses, raising crops, or traveling around the country. She's so faded she's become part of the scenery._

_Did you know she keeps one of the letters you sent me on her all the time? I wouldn't be surprised if she slept with the damned thing. Charlie never asks how you're doing and she doesn't like talking about you, I think because it makes her sad. When I try to bring you up she always has an excuse to leave but I know for damn sure she's about to cry. I can see it in the way she bites her lips to stop them from twitching and the way she keeps looking up to keep the tears in her eyes from falling. When she comes over for dinner she just stares at the empty seat you left behind. It's like she's trying to picture you there. Getting her to open up about it is like asking someone if you could run over their dog. I know I'm not the guy who does well with feelings and she's not the type of girl to cry on someone's shoulder, but I'm trying. Finally, today she told me that she doesn't think you'll ever come back- that you don't have a reason to._

_So I guess I'm writing you to let you know that you fucked up and you need to fix it. You have always been worried about people leaving you, but you never have taken it into account what it's like for the people you leave behind. With that in mind, do me a favor? Come and bring that baby up for a visit. Or write Charlie a letter. If she ever meant anything to you than you would let her know that she wasn't just a stop on the way to the life you want. Give her a reason to think you would come back because if you knew how much she missed you, you wouldn't stay away. Or at least give her a proper good-bye. You owe her that much._

_Besides, I'm kind of missing your ugly face too._

_M. M._

 

As Bass finishes Miles' letter he leans back on the top step of the wood-weathered porch and sighs. The sun above him is setting and he can hear his son playing with Emmaline on the floor of the living-room. Not even the sweet sounds of that little girl can tear his thoughts away from the person he left behind in Willoughby. Distance was the only thing he could come up with to put a stop to the clenched feeling Charlie had wrapped around his heart and all the impressions of hope and trust she sowed into his mind.

Charlie was never suppose to feel this way about him- the way he feels about her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo. Yeah. We're going to be seeing a little more from this.  
> Something my friend wrote down in my "Drunk Book" (he makes beer and I taste test it and we walk around his giant house and he asks me my thoughts on things and writes them down) that went along the lines of: Some people are closed off from the world. I am closed in.  
> It made me think of Charlie and Bass. Charlie has closed into herself. She lives with the loss of someone who is still living and she just folds into herself with the grief. Bass closes himself off- he takes every measure to ensure that he will feel nothing but we all know he has the biggest variety of feelings.  
> Hang in there little teacup, it won't always be so sad.


	3. The world leaves a bitter taste in mouth

_When you're left with nothing_  
There's nothing lefts to lose  
Words will not come looking for me and you  
Once we wanted nothing and everything was real  
It was all that I allow  
For me and you now 

Spell it Out- Embrace

 _It's so many miles and so long since I've left you_  
Don't even know what I'll find when I get to you  
But suddenly now I know where I belong  
It's many hundred miles and it won't be long 

Train Song- Vashti Bunyan

 

When Connor takes Emmaline home after dinner Bass sits on his couch- as he usually does, and pours himself a few fingers of whiskey-as he usually does. But unlike his usual end of the day routine he holds Miles' folded letter and contemplates the words written in the familiar handwriting. How could this happen? Love was never in the cards for him, he learned that lesson through so many heartbreaking failures and come to only one conclusion. That it didn't exist. 

The only thing that matters is family. You can't turn your back on your family, no matter how hard you try. The bonds of friendship and betrayal with the Mathesons' go deeper than anything he's ever felt. It's what kept Rachel alive. It's what kept a bullet out of Miles' head. It's what ensured Charlie's safety. It is a terrible fact that he would do nearly anything for that family. Letting her go just happens to be another one of those sacrifices.

He had submitted to the near desperate wanting Charlie left in him early on in their adventures. She was young and dangerous and a bit of a mystery. Everything made to entice a man in the shape of a formidable young woman. But Charlie was a part of Miles that he couldn't have to himself. And that was okay. It just meant that she became his family whether she wanted to be or not. That he would protect her whether she thought she needed him to or not. From the evils of man and from the evils of the world- or as much as he could. Being a Matheson guaranteed you a life saturated with pain and heartbreak. But he could spare her from himself. 

And then somewhere along the line wanting became so incomparable to what he actually began to feel.

She was no longer Charlotte Matheson. She became Charlie- the woman who would do anything for the people she loves. A beacon of moral that he'd somehow thought had gotten lost in the years of politics and paranoia. A home for all the stray and tired hearts she gathered along her travels. A voice of reason when chaos seemed like the easy way out. A snarky mouth quick with a quip that could make even the hardest of souls crack a smile. A bleeding heart that took all the problems in the world around her and tried so very hard to fix them. A rare beauty that he'd never thought could pull him in so swift and suddenly. 

She existed on an entirely different plane than he did. She became the embodiment of untouchable. If the beating of his heart when she was around was any indication that she swept him off his feet than all the times he thought to the future and saw her there with him was. 

He still does. She is there in his dreams, keeping all his greatest fears and nightmares at bay until the morning. She is with him in his office as he goes over commands, constantly reminding him of what he fought for and the right courses of action to take. In his bed, the memory of her figure and musky floral smell to help finish him off when the evenings are lonely but tolerable enough not to go out and convince someone he's better than a decent lay. 

Charlie is everywhere but where he needs her to be.

Before he left he could see something changing in her. Her eyes, always following him looked more confused than ever. And then she would have a hard time making eye contact with him when he noticed. But she was constantly watching him. They would stay up well into the morning hours discussing the differences of the world he grew up in and the world she had only known. Charlie would hang onto his every word and when the sun finally raised to blind them goodbyes were hesitant and awkward. She would follow Miles and him around the office in Willoughby, her presence a breath of life in the same boring routine. The last few missions Frank had him, Miles, Connor, and Charlie out running were the most memorable. Gone was the necessity of working together for the sake of ones' end goal; replaced by a perfectly in sync unit of people who cared and looked out for each other. If he noticed her sleeping roll was always closer to his than anyone elses he never commented on it. It was easier to fall asleep when he could hear her breathing just an arms reach away from him. 

He won't claim to know what is good for Charlie in the grand scheme of things but he knows he isn't it. And it's not that she deserves better. Charlie deserves whatever the hell makes her happy. But he can't be that person for her. She needs someone who doesn't have the blood of her family on his hands. She needs someone who doesn't like to pick fights and tear people down. She needs someone willing to talk about their problems instead of sealing them up only to be dragged out screaming later. She needs someone who can show her a different part of the life she's been living for the past four years. She needs someone who is going to be soft and gentle when all she knows is tough and unbreakable. 

And he would so very much like to be that man for her- but he can't be. No matter how much of his character she is willing to overlook he can't be the man that is going to make her happy in the end. And that is not a choice she would have been able to make for herself had they continued on the path they were on. 

But the path they are on this moment doesn't feel right either.

He was always content to be surrounded by people or in the company of himself but this solitude is just enough to drive him crazy. In the silence of his home he runs through conversations they had just to hear her voice in his head. The constant emptiness of his house when Connor and Emmaline aren't around is choking. He craves for their old back and forth banter and the easy way she had him laughing. Their conversations that left him pondering for days. The sound of her shuffle as she walked around is lost to him. The sight of her belongings on his desk or at his kitchen table when she visited becomes greatly missed. He itches and craves for her like an addict.

And according to Miles' words the feeling is entirely mutual. He has a hard time picturing Charlie as someone who just sits by and lets life pass her but he can understand it. Miles is not just describing the new Charlie, he has also pinpointed the new Bass. Holing themselves up in their offices and homes, not wanting to go out into the world because what they want out of it isn't there anymore. She should have bounced back to her normal self after his departure. She shouldn't be dragging herself from one day to the next. He shouldn't have left her when she so obviously latched onto him. To leave the girl who had a textbook example of separation anxiety was a dick move, but not leaving and letting her fall into him seemed so much worse.

Until now. Nothing is comparable to the heartsickness in his chest when he thinks of her and the way he left her without a goodbye. 

He swallows the last of his whiskey and leans forward, contemplating his next move. If he does this, everything changes. There will be no way to back out of it and pretend everything between them was just a series of events that would never lead up to anything. If he does this she gets to decide what she wants. Even if what she wants is a half living man with nothing to left to give but all his baggage and brokeness. 

But he will give her this choice.

His heart pulsates rapidly all over his body when he first sets pen to paper. 

 

_Hello Charlotte,_

 

_Let me start by saying how much I miss you._  
_It feels like I have lost something vital to life._  
It feels like I have have lost you.  
And I am an idiot to ever let you think you never mattered to me. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry! I was distraught with all these feelings and it just seemed like a good idea to continue this.  
> They'll be together soon!
> 
> Chapter title taken from the song Coming Home by Leon Bridges

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still debating whether or not this should be a stand alone. I like the sadness of it and not all stories are meant to be happy.


End file.
